Scanning the Elder Gods
by evan.dembskey
Summary: What happens when forbidden Lovecraftian texts are scanned and put online for everyone to read? I wrote this story a long time ago and updated it a couple of times. In total it's been rejected for publication maybe 20 times, so I thought I would take a hint and just put it out there for anyone who wants to read it.


Scanning the Elder Gods

by EJ Dembskey

Patience is a virtue that amply rewards those who have the time for it. I was to learn this simple fact when I was employed by the Miskatonic University Library to digitise their book collection for an online open books project. The idea was simple, scan the out-of-copyright books from our venerable collection and make them available publicly on the Internet. Anyone with an interest could download and read them, gratis, and even print them if they so desired; the majority of the collection is out of copyright. I learnt another simple fact too, that nothing in this world is free.

I was in my third year of computer science then. I never finished, but that is no surprise, considering what has happened since our open books project. Besides, there is no need for computer scientists anymore. Or computers, or scientists, or much of anything.

The MU library has a little over 10,000 books. Or is that had? The open books project was planned to run for five years, and employ twenty to thirty students simultaneously per year. We planned to digitise about two thousand books per year.

The project had come as a surprise. While MU offered excellent courses in the classics, and archaeology, it was not known for it's embrace of modern technology. Quite how my Alma Mater survived without embracing the Internet age has always been something of a mystery. Rumours of wealthy but reclusive benefactors have been de rigueur since my father walked those hallowed halls. The open books project started well, and we worked solidly after hours and over weekends for six months. Volunteer turnover was high; after all, the work was not calculated to excite freshly educated minds. But the poor state of the economy ensured a steady supply of hungry students to operate the scanners. I myself relied upon this meagre income to sustain myself.

The trouble began when the librarian opened a hitherto unnoticed room, which contained nothing but a single dusty barrister bookcase. It was not a large bookcase, only four feet wide and perhaps six high. It was made of some dark, fine-grained and oily wood that none could identify, not even the eminent professor Dexter, who they say could identify the forest from a splinter. Running a finger down the bookcase's surface gave the impression, if one closed one's eyes, of running a finger along oily reptilian skin of some unknown antediluvian genus; repulsive and seductive in equal measures, you just couldn't stop yourself from running your fingers across that strange and dark wood. None of us could bear to look at the doors, so grotesquely did the glass distort our reflections.

The bookcase contained less than twenty volumes. Volumes more damnable than any written before or after, but at the time the word "damnable" held no meaning, it was just a quaint and outdated word. To us these hoary tomes were just superstitious nonsense from an age so remote that it was indistinguishable from the time of Homer. What place did this incoherent nonsense have in our world of satellites, smart phones and broadband? What were the incoherent scribblings of charlatans and madmen to we children of the silicon chip? We laughed and jeered.

Dr. Olga Armitage, the librarian, brought the books from the private room to me and suggested that I should scan them next. The books had strange names, like De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludvig Prinn, Cultes de Ghoules by Comte d'Erlette and Unaussprechlichen Kulten by von Junzt. The strangest of the books were perhaps the Necronomicon, The Book of Eibon, the Pnakotic Manuscript and something called the R'lyeh Text. I placed them carelessly in the pile of books we were scanning next. Had I but a glimpse of the future, I would have cast them upon the fire!

Dr. Armitage had been waiting patiently for just such an opportunity to make these cursed tomes available to a wider audience. But I didn't know that then. I hadn't known that I would be the instrument that would unleash an unspeakable horror on the world. A horror that had been patiently waiting outside of time and space. No, that's not right. Between time and space. But I get ahead of myself! Dr. Armitage and the hideous, gibbering creatures' time was yet to come.

We started scanning The Book of Eibon on a Monday evening in late October. The wind was high, and the gigantic elms beat the library walls and windows with a fury unlike I had seen before then. I was surprised that no damage beyond the venerable ivy being shorn from the old walls. I remember now the ivy lying brown and rotting on the ground, in mounds of stinking vegetable masses. Perhaps, I now wonder, that that was somehow significant?

There were three of us scanning books that evening; Gerald Moore had chosen that dread book, I was at work on a first year chemistry textbook from the early 20th century. We finished out work late, so I slept in the library, for I was to report for work early the next day, and did not wish the expense of travel when there was little to eat.

On the Tuesday we scanned a handful of science books, and I scanned the mouldy Pnakotic Manuscript. It had been printed in 1888, but had not withstood the ravages of time well. The pages were well-worn, and here or there were dark patches that I at the time mistook for coffee stains. Perhaps it is lucky that we did not have time to read the books we scanned. Or perhaps unlucky, for it is possible that we would not have scanned them had we read them first. The few pages we did read resulted in laughter.

The day ended uneventfully, and we uploaded the books we had scanned since the previous Friday, to make them available to the general public. Almost immediately our web servers were overloaded with requests for the books, which kept the outsourced network support department busy. They kindly created mirror sites for the books, and copied them to servers located all over the world.

I did not return to work again until the next Friday afternoon, the pressures of study and laboratory work occupying my time.

We should have seen the warning signs then, but what does a headline concerning sudden and strange suicides in distant corners of the world have to do with us? And restive cults in remote places and their strange habits? No, we ignored the news but for trivialities that generally occupy young minds; but the signs were there for those who could read them.

Dr. Armitage presented me with De Vermis Mysteriis, Cultes de Ghoules and Unaussprechlichen Kulten to scan, which I dutifully did. I did not like the feel of these leather-bound books, full of strange symbols and veiled hints about the true origins of the human species. Nor did I like the way Dr. Armitage hovered over me, touching me, saying "no, call me Olga", and uncharacteristically fetching sandwiches and cups of coffee for me, so that I could work without interruption.

Her too-wide mouth and eyes that were almost on the side of her head had always been remarked upon, and were the source of many cruel jokes that had hitherto evoked my pity for her. Now she smiled in a hideous way, and I realised I never saw her blink. From her skin a faint but hideous, wet, odour was detectable. I no longer felt quite as much pity for her.

Nonetheless, over the Friday and Saturday I scanned the books, eager to be out of her presence, but more eager to earn my wage. We uploaded the books late in the night, but my nerves were so rattled by her strange demeanour that I did not stay the night in the library, even though I was to start work early the next morning, Sunday the 30th of October.

Now the signs became more apparent, and impinged upon our conscious minds. But we still lacked the knowledge to synthesise the facts, to weave a whole cloth from the threads that lay before us. The sudden surge of uploaded videos showing strange rituals made the front page of newspapers around the world, whipped the bloggosphere into a frenzy, and banner headlines on the world wide web. The hashtag "#eldergodsarise" trended. Reports of strange behaviour and suicides in some of the more impressionable that had viewed the strange videos increased. But we did not connect these with the reports of attacked churches, suicides and violence in the world. For were these not normal occurrences? Murder and thuggery was lost in the torrent of news that gushed from our televisions and computers.

The weather that Sunday was grim indeed, the skies leaden, the air heavy with an unsavoury odour to it, as of some large fish decaying on a beach. Dr. Armitage was in a state of high excitement. I was sure she wore the same clothes as on the previous day, and her body odour revolted me, particularly as she had developed the habit of standing close enough to the volunteers that her body would touch them. It was not simply an unwashed smell, but something worse. A strange combination of seductive perfume and rotting meat. She presented me with but a single volume to scan and upload. It was the Necronomicon.

Even the strange wet oiliness of its leather cover did not stop me from my duty, though I rubbed my hands frequently on my denims, until they were raw and painful. But the feel of the book stayed, no matter how many times I cleaned them. I feel it still today. Something of that book has permeated my skin and made it alien.

The book itself was filled with dense typescript and hand-drawn images. Marginalia in a variety of hands made the book harder to scan. And then there were the stains again. Stains that I assured myself were nothing but coffee stains, though I had never seen coffee leave quite so thick a residue.

And all the time Dr. Armitage hovered, smiling her gap-toothed wet grin. Making cups of coffee that I did not dare drink, for I could not bring myself to touch the same cup she had touched; she left thick, dark, and oily fingerprints behind. I fancied perhaps that I saw a little green against the white of the cup. No – I worked quickly and without break so I could flee the library. The next day, I swore to myself, I would find employment somewhere else.

The book scanned and uploaded, I returned home and slept early, but poorly. My sleep was disturbed by strange dreams of Dr. Armitage, in which she had willing concourse with a succession of indescribable creatures, each one more hideous than the previous. I awoke bathed in sweat more than once, but each time sleep claimed me, it was only to plunge me into the same dark place.

I awoke late, despite the dreams. The television revealed a world gone mad. Everywhere gatherings of men and women were engaged in strange rituals, oblivious or uncaring that they were filmed and broadcast. Men and women of all ages chanted strangely, and tore their clothing. This was but a prelude to the madness, for they threw themselves into wild abandon, before rending themselves. Twice images of creatures like those in my dreams showed; terrible, gibbering nightmares that surpassed the wildest imaginations of artists and movie-makers. They descended into an orgy of blood and blasphemous concourse, before the cameramen and reporters were themselves taken by this strange and damnable curse.

Then slowly, one by one, the channels went black.

One of the last showed the president leading a gathered mass of humanity in ritual, culminating in the sacrifice of political rivals on a horrible stone altar. I switched the television off, and opened my curtains. Outside, plumes of smoke met in the heavens to blot out the sun. I saw corpses, piled ten feet high, but saw no one to do the piling, as all were dead. A curtain twitched in an apartment opposite mine. I closed my curtains quickly, and moved away. Perhaps it was the wind. Or perhaps it was someone like me, trapped and in need of succour. But perhaps it wasn't.

I switched on my laptop then, and read the books we had scanned and uploaded. For a full day a laboured at this task, not pausing for food or drink. I heard screams outside more than once. And wet sounds too. Once, something banged against my window, and seemed to slide over my roof, and down the other side of the building, but I hid under a table, and continued to read.

I knew then that I would never see the sun again, and that the patient elder gods we had released would not have mercy on our bodies or our souls. The suffering of life would be a minor prelude to our real damnation - now I understood the meaning of that word - an eternity of incomprehensible torment.

I cried then, and prayed that the god of my parents still lived, and would have mercy on my soul.


End file.
